LABORATORY MILK.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1612, 21 January 1903, Page 62

LABORATORY MILK.

This food. supply for infants is employed on a very large scale in America, and it is from America that information as to the results may be expected Dairies and cons are under careful supervision. The milk is pasteurised and packed in ice. The infant receives from day to day a food uniform in quantity, each feed being in a separate bottle, with an identical percentage of fat, sugar, and proteids as. ordered by the physician, and a fixed alkalinity. It is thus according to Louis Starr, "theoretically the most perfect substitute for normal human milk that science lias yet devised, but, unfortunately, clinical experience, in my own practice at least, does not bear tliis theory our.” He has seen only three cases in which a state of health was maintained on this diet up to the time of beginning a mixed diet. On the other hand, he has net with sixteen eases where this diet had to be stopped owing to impaired nutri-

tion. The symptoms in these oases were: pallid dry skin, dry lustreless hair, flabby soft muscles, nuuiferent- appetite, sluggish bowels, listlessnes* anci disinclination to play, peevishness, and restless sleep. In thirty-five cases laboratory milk feeding had to be discontinued because of some acute disorder, also of dietetic origin. The explanation of these facts is a matter of great difficulty, and Starr’s view is that, in the process of prepartion the natural emulsion of the milk has been destroyed. For the fat is entirely removed by the separator, and the mixture given is an artificial re-combination of -this fat (cream) with an alkaline solution of proteids and sugar. This, according to the writer, may lessen the digestibility of the protoicls and lead to a condition either of malnutrition or of irrative diarrhoea. The experience of Starr is very, valuable, and may well “give us pause” in this country, where the use of laboratory milk is being pushed by some energetic people.